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recipe: vegan mayo

On mayonnaise…

Everyone has their, “the only thing I really missed when I became vegan was ______.” Fill in the blank with, most likely, cheese. For me, that blank was filled with mayonnaise. Lots and lots of mayonnaise. I used to eat it straight outta the jar (sometimes on a piece of cheese, to be fair). And, in my early days of vegan-conversion, I remember looking longingly into my mother’s fridge at the large jar of Hellmann’s and thinking, “What I wouldn’t give…”

Instead of giving in, however, I learned to like Vegannaise. It took me a few years, but I discovered that the grape seed oil version was far tastier to me than the others. And, in recent years, I’ve actually come to love the stuff. There’s no binging on it straight out of the jar, but that’s only because I don’t come home drunk at 3am too often these days.

Recently, when I noticed my dear jumbo jar of Vegannaise was up to nine bucks, I set out to make my own. I tried 10 or 12 popular recipes online, but each was too sweet or too tangy. I decided to make my own, and after a few attempts…it’s just right.

1 T coconut vinegar (if you don’t have a bottle of this stuff, buy yourself one, as a treat, but apple cider vinegar works well here)

½ t dijon mustard (a lot of vegan mayo recipes use mustard powder, but I really dislike the flavor that imparts in the end product, I find regular dijon mustard, or even yellow mustard, is much better)

1 T sugar (any dry sugar, like turbinado)

½ t salt

1 T fresh lemon juice

⅓ cup grape seed oil (I am sure you can use other oils here, but grape seed is my favorite!)

Instructions

Put everything into a high-speed blender (like a Vitamix or Magic Bullet) and blend for one minute, until fluffy and thick.

Notes

If you don’t have a high speed blender, just use a regular blender or even a food processor, but blend everything except the oil together first until it’s creamy and combined, then slooooowly pour in the oil over the course of about 2 minutes of blending to let it emulsify.

3.2.1753

On first world problems…

There are always so many sauces and dressings in our fridge that I have to label them, lest we have to stick our fingers in to determine what they are (and if they’re edible).

On snacking…

My favorite snack ever is baby or grape tomatoes dipped in mayo. This has been a guilty pleasure since I was a teenager. I still have it as a snack probably once a week (or whenever I can get my hands on decent cherry tomatoes, the baby heirlooms pictured here have come in our organic veggie share three weeks in a row – needless to say I’ve made approximately six pounds of mayonnaise to go with them). I was creating a cauliflower popper recipe yesterday and mixed the mayo with Sriracha to make a dipping sauce. I ate all the poppers (all of them…by myself) and then had leftover spicy mayo. So, what was a girl to do but bust out some baby tomatoes. Oooh it was good.